8 Michael Corner and The Dungeon of Doom
by ivoryglobe2
Summary: Short stories following real time in the Potterverse, following the career of Michael Corner. 8. The Ministry is n control of Hogwarts and Michael is part of the subversive Dumbledore's Army. Pranks are one thing, but it is another when innocent firsties suffer as a result of them


Michael Corner and the Dungeon of Doom

'Do you remember,' I said to Boot, 'when we used to get on this train and it was the gateway to a world of excitement and adventure?'

Terry looked gloomily at the Ministry security crews that were patrolling the platform. 'Seems like another world,' he said. 'You didn't have any trouble with your family, did you?'

'No, we're okay,' I said. 'Dad's a Muggle but Mum's wand goes way back.' I didn't need to ask about his family. They were one of the oldest in the Books, so I was quite surprised when he leaned close to whisper.

'We had a visit from Security, a couple of days ago,' he said. 'That idiot Dawlish. Wanted to check on our blood sympathies.'

'Yours?' I said. 'Or your family's?'

'Ostensibly, the family's,' he said. 'But I had a very thorough inquisition.'

'Is that because of the DA?' We had both been members of Dumbledore' Army, the Defence Against The Dark Arts practice group in our OWL year.

'Probably,' he said. 'Did you get anything?'

'No interest at all,' I said, and it was true that I hadn't been bothered in the holidays. But the Ministry knew about my involvement with the DA. My stomach clenched at the memory. The previous term I had told a wizard from the Ministry that the DA had disbanded, which had seemed innocuous enough at the time. I had a horrible suspicion that this information had prompted the attack in the summer term and the death of Professor Dumbledore. I hadn't told anyone about it but the sense of guilt had been gnawing at me all during the holidays.

'Hey, Tone!' drawled Boot as Tony Goldstein sloped up to us. 'Skiving prefect duties?'

'Not much to do,' said Tony. 'Face it. No-one's going to misbehave with this lot around.' He nodded at the Security. 'And the firsties are still saying tearful good-byes.'

'Do you know if the Security will be with us on the Express?' I said.

He shook his head. 'No clue,' he said. 'Mind you, I didn't think there'd be such a heavy presence here. I mean, what are they looking for?'

'The people who aren't here,' said Terry.

'The Potter Brigade?' said Tony. 'Surely they can't have expected them to turn up.'

'Ginny's here,' I said.

'Well, Ron ain't,' said Tony. 'I heard he's got a lurgy, which seems rather convenient.'

'I was thinking of Muggleborns, actually,' said Terry. 'I saw them chucking a Muggleborn off the train a few minutes ago, and they confiscated his wand. I think they may be detaining Muggleborn parents who turn up with their kids. Tim Knaresby's mum's Muggleborn and I saw her surrounded by uniforms.'

'I saw Tim a moment ago,' said Tony. 'He looked okay.'

'They let her go,' said Terry. 'For now. But I bet they know where she lives.'

There were two Security men on duty in each carriage. All the Security on the train were wearing mesh capes over their robes, to deflect minor jinxes, and all of them were unshaven. They all had their hoods up and I could only see their chins. I suppose it was to make them look tougher, and they did look slightly sinister, but the main effect was to make them look untidy.

Two things struck me about them. The first was that they were all quite young, for all that they were trying to look hard. The second was that I didn't recognise any of them.

'Do you think they were at Hogwarts?' I muttered to Mandy Brocklehurst.

'They must have been,' she said. 'There isn't anywhere else. Not in the UK.'

'Perhaps they've brought them in from outside,' said Terry.

'I wonder if they're wizards at all,' I said. 'Perhaps that's why they need the mesh capes. Perhaps they have no way of defending themselves.

'Interesting idea,' said Terry. 'Are you going to test it?'

'I think I'll pass on that,' I said. I wanted to keep a low profile as far as Security was concerned.

Ginny and Luna appeared in the corridor and Luna waved through the window.

'Come on in,' called Terry and once we had congratulated them on their excellent OWL results I made the same point about the Security to them.

'Only one way to find out,' said Ginny and she went out to the Security man standing in the corridor outside our compartment. 'Hi!' she said brightly. 'Which house were you in?'

The man looked at her impassively. 'Get back to your compartment,' he said. He was definitely English.

'Okay,' she said. 'Sorry to have bothered you.' But I realised that I knew the voice.

'Hello, Agg,' I said.

He looked startled and his hood fell back. 'Oh, Hi, Mike, isn't it?'

Agamemnon, Agg to his friends, had installed the security protection package on my home because Death Eaters had been targeting Muggle partners, such as my dad. The protections were part of the deal * by which I gave information about Harry, a deal that I bitterly regretted but I thought at the time that all the information I gave was useless.

Agg was looking distinctly uncomfortable at being recognised. I could see that he was itching to chew on a straw from the case that would be somewhere about his person.

'I thought you were on protection installation duty,' I said.

'Yeah, well, they roped in everyone they could find for this, you get me?' he said. 'All the blokes in the Ministry who couldn't think of an excuse, you get me? And some more beside.'

'No witches?' said Ginny.

'The new management's got some odd ideas about what wizards and witches should do, you get me?' he said. 'They reckoned this was wizards' work. Should have brought in some witches, you get me? Some of them witches in the Ministry are tough old cookies. Wouldn't have to bring in them Muggle security firms, you get me?'

He was called away down the carriage and we went back to the compartment.

'This is getting even more interesting,' said Terry. 'They don't trust witches, and they don't have enough wizards so they're having to use Muggle muscle for Security. I wonder what's waiting for us at the castle.'

No carriages for a start. We had to walk up to the castle, in our Houses. I had the impression that they would have formed us up into ranks and marched us if they could. It wasn't very far but it was a strange experience. Our bags and trunks were piled on two carts that were pulled by honest-to-goodness horses and they creaked along behind us.

No Hagrid. Filch herded the firsties and they came up behind the carts.

Then there were the Carrows.

Snape, God knows, was never my most favouritest person in the world, but beside the Carrows he was positively angelic. He even warned us about them, at the Feast, but his warning was so laconic that a lot of people didn't take it seriously.

'I am,' he said, 'as many of you know, no great friend of ill-discipline.'

That was certainly true and it got a slight laugh, which he ignored.

'However,' he went on, 'I have tended to avoid inflicting physical injuries on students as this entails tedious amounts of paperwork.' He paused. 'The Professors Carrow, let me advise you, have no fear of paperwork.'

And that was it. The brother was lapping it up and grinning from ear to ear (a tricky feat, as his ears were at different levels) and the sister was staring greedily around the Hall as though assessing the whole school as potential victims. We discovered that this was not a metaphor.

There were noticeable gaps in the tables, all except the Slytherin table, where the Muggleborns should have been. There was the usual buzz of chatter but it seemed more subdued than usual and the Sorting Hat's oration had been about six lines long and promoted conformity. At the end of the feast we were all formed up by years and marched off to our Common Rooms with no talking allowed. It was all very strange and dreary and un-Dumbledoreish.

At supper the following day, Snape stood up to give out various notices as usual and at the end he paused.

'Will Messrs Corner, Longbottom, Lovegood, McMillan and Weasley be outside my office at six-thirty this evening,' he said.

My heart nearly missed beat when I heard my name. This didn't sound good. All members of the DA.

I glanced at Luna, who looked totally unconcerned and dreamy, as usual, but Ernie caught my eye and raised his eyebrows, questioningly. I shrugged. I had no more idea about what was going on than he did.

We duly assembled in the corridor by the gargoyles that guarded his door. It was exactly at six-thirty and we were muttering to each other and feeling tense. Professor Snape swept up to us after about five minutes of waiting.

'You will follow me,' he said. 'There will be no need for you to speak.'

He muttered something to the gargoyles, which stepped smartly to the side and he led us up the staircase to his office. We stood in a clump in front of his desk and he marched around it to face us.

'I am aware that you were prominent members of an illegal association in your fifth year,' he said. He let that sink in. 'I can assure you that such subversive activity will not be tolerated under the current regime and your Heads of House will not be in charge of punishments meted out. You may go.'

Now, I don't know whether it had been in the back of anyone else's mind but I swear that, up to that moment, it hadn't occurred to me that the DA might reform. I'm also sure that, as we walked back down the stairs, we were all thinking the same thing: How will we do this?

Ginny, in particular, was almost vibrating with indignation, and as soon as we were out of earshot he burst out.

'He's got the Sword!' she said.

'The Sword of Gryffindor?' said Luna. 'It's always been there.'

'He left it to Harry,' she said.

There was a chorus along the lines of 'He what?'

'Dumbledore left it to Harry,' she said. 'In his will.'

'How on Earth do you know that?' said Ernie.

'Scrimgeor came to our house before the Ministry was taken over,' she said. 'Dumbledore had left some odd trinkets to Harry and Ron and Hermione and he came down to hand them over. But he said that Dumbledore had also left Harry the Sword of Gryffindor, but he couldn't have it.'

'Why ever not?' said Ernie.

'He said it wasn't Dumbledore's to give,' she said.

'Fair point,' said Neville.' It must belong to the school.'

'Then why did he leave it to Harry?' said Ginny. 'Dumbledore's no mug. He must have known they wouldn't let Harry have it but, but he wanted it to go to Harry all the same.'

'Why?' I said. 'Why Harry specifically?'

She shrugged impatiently. 'I don't know, but he's got a mission,' she said. 'He's got some task that Dumbledore set him and they were working on it before Dumbledore died. He must need the Sword for that.'

'We'd better get it for him, then,' said Neville.

And that was it. The DA already had a mission.

'How do we get in there?' said Neville as we walked back down the corridor.

'Did you catch the password?' Ginny asked Ernie 'You were nearest, weren't you.'

'Not very clearly,' said Ernie. 'Something like "Shemblemble".'

'Doesn't sound like a spellword or anything like that,' said Neville.

'Harry said he often used the names of Muggle sweets,' said Ginny. 'What's a shemblemble?' she asked me. 'You live more or less in the Muggle world, don't you?'

I thought about sweets. 'Sherbet Lemons?' I said.

'Genius!' said Neville, slapping me on the back. 'I'm sure Harry mentioned sherbet lemons.' He paused. 'What are sherbet lemons?'

So that was pretty good progress. We already knew how we were going to get into Snape's study and we hadn't even got back to our Common Rooms.

The next question was how we were going to get the Sword to Harry once we had taken it. Ginny suggested that we should ask Hagrid because she knew that he had hidden out in a cave a couple of miles from the castle grounds. She thought she could get a message to Harry through one of her many brothers.

The little detail we had overlooked was how we were actually going to steal the Sword in the first place.

We crept along the corridor while I held us all under a cloud of _ennuiage_, the boringness spell I had learned from the Beauxbatons students. It made us almost invisible, or rather un-noticeable, but there was no-one to notice us.

The plan was that I should stay outside as look-out, still under _ennuiage_, while Ginny, Neville and Luna went up to the study. They would open the case, using _diffinido_ if necessary, and get out again as quickly as they could. I had Ernie's charmed galleon and would raise the alarm, if anyone came in sight. Luna would keep her coin in her hand to detect any changes in temperature. If a threat appeared they were to get down the stairs as quickly as possible and back under the _ennuiage_ cloud, with or without the Sword.

Amazingly, it all worked fine, right up to the last moment when they were creeping back down the stairs. Neville was clutching the Sword, which was much bigger than it appeared when it was hanging on the wall in Dumbledore's study.

But the moment he passed the gargoyles:

''Ere! Wot you got there?' said one of them.

We all froze, but Neville recovered quickly.

'Nothing,' he said. 'Just a sword.'

'That ain't a just-a-sword,' said the other one.

'I reckon you're Thieves!' said the first.

'Thieves! Thie …' they both yelled before Ginny could cast _silencio_ at them.

Instantly, there was a series of pops as several house elves, in what looked like black togas, Apparated in the corridor. Security elves. They flicked their fingers. Our feet jerked up under us and we all fell flat on our faces. I hit my head in the gargoyle and dropped the _ennuiage_ cloud, I couldn't hold it. Neville dropped the Sword and then Ginny and Luna tripped over him and they all lay in a tangled mass. The elves Disapparated again and I was just trying to get the cloud up again when Snape swept around the corner.

Too late. He moved faster that I would have thought possible, even at a sprint, but he never broke his stride. I'd got it to cover myself but I couldn't get it to spread any further, and then he was there. He stared down at Neville, who had grabbed the Sword again. Ginny was glaring at him but Luna looked unconcerned and mildly interested as usual.

'What a sorry sight,' he sneered. 'Security!' And several elves reappeared. 'Take them to the dungeons,' he told the elves. 'Do not let them speak to each other and do not let anyone else see them or speak to them either.'

Two elves seized the others and vanished. Snape walked up the stairs and I slunk off back to the Ravenclaw Common Room.

The following morning, before any breakfast appeared on the tables, Snape marched on to the dais to stand in front of the place where the Head always sat. The Carrows followed, leading Neville, Ginny and Luna who were tied up in chains.

'These students,' said Snape, 'were caught last night in a criminal act and have spent the night in the dungeons.'

'Only because your bleedin' house elves wouldn't let us get at them,' snarled the brother. 'I thought we're supposed to be in charge of bleedin' punishments in this dump.'

'I do apologise, Professor Carrow,' said Snape. 'I must have instructed the elves to ensure that nobody approached them, whereas I should have told them to prevent any students from approaching them. In future cases I will hand miscreants over to you. In this case they will be under the charge of Professor Hagrid, who has some unpleasant tasks in the Forest for which he requires assistance.'

'They must be fairly hairy tasks if even Hagrid needs help,' muttered Tony.

The criminals reappeared at supper, unharmed as far as we could tell, and looking quite cheerful.

'What happened?' I asked Luna as soon as we sat down.

'Oh, it was quite interesting, actually,' she said. 'He need help clearing out a Manticore nest. Baby Manticores are cute, did you know?'

'Manticores are absolutely hideous,' Ginny told me a few hours later. 'Like cats with horrible wrinkled babies' heads, and a nasty spiked tail. And they move so fast.'

'That's why he needed help,' said Neville. 'He engaged the mother in reasoned debate, which ended with her in an arm lock and her tail in a knot. Our job was to round up the cubs and make sure none escaped. It wasn't too bad.'

The Carrows' teaching methods were novel. I wasn't doing Muggle Studies, so I never experienced the sister's lessons which were, apparently, rants. The gist was that she didn't like Muggles. Hannah Abbot asked why it was the wizards who had to be in hiding, and had to conceal themselves while the Muggles, who were stupid, ruled the country. Hannah was put in detention and spent two hours dealing with a doxie infestation in the sister's sitting room, with her bare hands.

The brother's approach to DADA was more direct. Forget the Defence part. We were learning how to Curse. Some of were better than others but, for the very first time, Vincent Crabbe was top of the class. At the beginning of every lesson we all had to draw lots and the unlucky loser was the victim for the session. Crabbe also never drew the low card, which made us suspect that the odds were stacked.

The only element of defence was that the victim could defend himself or herself, without using a Shield. My most successful defence was then I managed to turn Goyle into a wombat before he could Curse me. This was doubly satisfactory because the brother didn't know what a wombat was, so he couldn't find the counter-curse.

I got a detention for that, which meant that I was assigned the role of victim for a week, which wasn't much fun. Only the Slytherins actually tried to hurt me, but I had three legs for a day, my ears fell off and I lost all my hair. I spent so much time in the hospital wing that Poppy Pompom allocated me my own bed.

It was obvious, right from the beginning of term, that the Carrows were not all that bright and totally inexperienced. I guess this happens in all schools and the natural response of students everywhere is to see how far new teachers can be pushed before they realised that they are being goaded. Most schools don't have new teachers who are also sadistic psychopaths who think that whips are for sissies and will beat miscreants with live snakes.

Snape rarely intervened, although he ruled out the use of _crucio_ or any punishment that left a scar that Poppy Pompom couldn't heal. Among the Sixth and Seventh Years we were fairly clued up about the risks of goading the Carrows. The DA really did reconstitute itself and we were organised to cover each other. We met regularly in the Room of Requirements to train in defence and to plot what to do next. We all became pretty hot at Disillusionment, which was useful until the Carrows dug out a counter- spell. After that I taught people _ennuiage_, which was cool because the counter-spell would be in French and the Carrows didn't know any French. They reckoned the French were only a step up from Muggles. We took a leaf out of Granger's book, in fact we studied her book very carefully, and concentrated our research on our own counter-curses.

Graffiti started to appear around the school, which only Filch and the Carrows seemed interested in removing. Classrooms were found inexplicably filled with balloons, sheep, or kangaroos (which puzzled Hagrid as he had never seen one before).

The Carrows weren't that bright, at to start with they didn't realise that all this was directed at them. The rest of the staff, including Snape, treated it as business as usual, student high spirits, etc., but then reports of our activities started appearing in The Quibbler. Everyone knew that The Quibbler was firmly aligned with Harry and we guessed that Luna was telling her father about us. Eventually, the Carrows made the connection and things started to become nasty.

Luna was taken from the train at the beginning of the Yule holidays. It was all very low key and she went quietly, looking as unconcerned as usual. The Security guys didn't touch her. They just marched beside her like an escort. I guess that having a father who edits a national newspaper, even a loony one like The Quibbler, gives some protection, but she didn't come back in the New Year. Neither did Ginny. The whole Weasley family went to ground, even the twins, because Ron was outed as not having the lurgy at all.

With two of the ringleaders gone, and Ernie starting to lose his nerve, the DA went a bit quiet. To kick things off again, I jinxed the brother's classroom so that you could only sing in it.

That turned out to be a disaster.

The jinx was supposed to last until the end of the Year Seven lesson. However, it clung on in one corner of the room, by the brother's desk, during the next session with the First Years. One firstie, a Huff called Hector Bracegirdle, was so overcome by the brother's aria on the subject of _hexenwulfen_ that the brother completely lost his rag. The one thing that he and his sister really hated, that they were really terrified of, was being laughed at. He summoned chains to bind Hector and called Filch to take him and throw him into the dungeon.

That evening, Snape stood up to give out the usual notices when the brother elbowed him out of the way.

'There's some snotty little toe-rag in the dungeons who showed me some disrespect,' he shouted, spittle flying in all directions. 'I'm gonna let the little bleeder rot in his own juice and tomorrow morning I'm gonna show him some disrespect. And I'll enjoy it.'

There was a silence in which we could hear the sister giggling.

Snape stood up again. 'Well, there you have it,' he said. 'There will be no more notices.'

'What do you think that means?' I muttered to Boot.

'Torture, I'd guess,' said Boot. 'The bastard's been aching to take it out on someone.'

'Surely Snape will stop him,' said Mandy.

'You remember what Snape said at the beginning of term,' said Boot. 'The Carrows are in charge of discipline.'

'I've got to get him out,' I said, though it was terribly hard to say it. 'It was my jinx, my remedy.'

'There's no point,' said Mandy. 'They'll get him anyway.'

'Maybe we can get him out,' I said. 'I don't know, but we can't leave him in the dungeons.'

I noticed that none of them disagreed with me.

The castle doesn't really have dungeons. The 'dungeons' are really just the cellars and they weren't too bad. Snape even had his classroom down there because the steady temperature was good for potion-making. The Carrows had changed all that. They had converted some of the smaller rooms into cells and Snape's classroom into a torture chamber.

I slipped along the corridors down to the stairs that led to the dungeons. It was well after midnight and there was no sign of any staff prowling the corridors, not even Filch and his cat. I saw a couple of ghosts, but we ignored each other, and even the occupants of the portraits seemed asleep.

I tried to move from cover to shadow to hiding place and make as little noise as possible. No running, because people could hear running, even in socks. Just trying to walk quietly and evenly, putting up an _ennuiage_ cloud when I felt too exposed.

I had expected to find the Huff in one of the cells, and I had practised several opening spells before I came out, but he was in the torture chamber. I could hear little mewing cries before I reached the door. He was lying in the middle of the floor, gagged and wrapped up in chains.

'Come on, Hector. Let's get you out of this,' I whispered, and his eyes flew open, as terrified of me as much as anything else.

The chains and the gag were charmed, but I managed to get them off without too much damage. All the while he was trying to tell me something, but I couldn't get the gag out before I had the chains off. I explained this as I went, but as soon as I got to the gag he hissed, 'They're in here.'

I froze, and my heart sank. I couldn't see them anywhere so they were probably under a Dissillusionment. I put up a Shield as quietly as I could. I could manage a complete bubble, like a transparent tank, but it works both ways. He couldn't get out while it was up and I wouldn't be able to squeeze it through the doorway.

'Can you walk?' I whispered.

'I … I think so,' he said.

'I'm going to drop the Shield on three,' I whispered. 'Run as fast as you can and keep going. Find Neville Longbottom or Ernie McMillan. One. Two. Three.'

He wobbled to his feet and hardly got to the door before a Trip jinx hit him and he fell. But I saw where it came from and got the Shield back up before anyone could get me and heard him running down the passage.

'So, you little smartarse,' sneered the brother, fading into view. 'Where did that get you?'

I didn't answer. I was looking for the sister and I thought I knew where she was because she had cast the Trip.

'I'll tell you,' he said. 'Bleedin' nowhere. 'E's got nowhere to run to and neither 'ave you.'

Then I heard a little giggle. Unfortunately it was between me and the door. I backed towards the door, but I could feel resistance which had to be the sister standing in the way. I was stuck. I tried manoeuvring round her, but she was trying to herd me against a wall. I was running out of juice for the Shield.

The brother threw a Stunner at me and I felt the Shield wobble. So did he.

'We got 'im, Alecto. On three,' he shouted.

On 'Two' I dived for the door, tried to roll through it, but hit my shoulder too hard on the ground. Their stunners smacked into the wall above my head and I tried casting a Stunner with my left hand, over my shoulder. It didn't do much but might have put the sister off her aim because her second stunner just caught my elbow. It gave me a dead arm as I was trying to get another Shield up.

But the brother shot a slashing curse that got under my new Shield, which was too small to cover me, and he caught me across my legs. The sister got me with a Body Bind and that was it for the night.

Not quite.

'Don't care about the squirt,' said the brother, kicking me on the leg, just where his slash had got me. 'The crowd gets their entertainment, don't they? They just loves their entertainment, and you're going to lie here for a bit before you go on stage.'

They left me in the Bind all night.

If you get cramp in a Bind there's nothing you can do about it. And knowing that things were going to get a lot worse didn't make the night any more comfortable. By the time the Security guys came to get me I was almost glad to see them.

One of them was Agg. He looked grim and wouldn't catch my eye. They carried me up the stairs to the Entrance Hall, where the sister was waiting and she broke the Bind. I flopped to the floor, unable to move. I had lost track of time but I could hear breakfast going on in the Dining Hall, or lunch, perhaps. We waited for a few minutes before the sister came back out and beckoned us in.

'Now, 'ere we 'ave a bleedin 'ero,' announced the brother as Agg pushed me to the front of the dais. 'And you know what we do to 'eros?' he went on. 'We make them bleedin' regret their 'eroism, don't we.'

All I could see was a sea of faces staring up at me. Even the Slytherin table looked subdued and the people I could see on Ravenclaw looked close to tears.

'Watch and learn,' said the brother. 'So you'll know better next time.'

'No visible scars, remember?' murmured Snape.

'Don't worry, Sevvy, my pet,' said the brother. 'All taken care of. _Crucio_.'

And my body exploded.

Now, here's an interesting irony. This little episode led directly to the development of a protection from _Crucio_. After all this was over and things had calmed down, Hermione Granger and I got together at some celebration and we compared notes. We were, as far as we knew, the only survivors of _Crucio _(apart from Harry, and he's a bit of a special case). _Crucio_ itself doesn't usually kill, but victims don't usually survive.

This is why; it is a very quick curse, quick to say (three syllables) and quick to fly. _Avada Kedavra_ is much longer, with six syllables and it flies slowly, so an opponent can easily get a protection or a response in before it hits. This means that _Crucio_ is used to incapacitate the victim so _AK_ can be cast at leisure.

Hermione and I put our heads together and we did more research and we reckoned that the effect is not in the mind, as we had thought. It is an actual physical pain caused by the fluid in the joints suddenly expanding and trying to force the bones apart. All of them. Your body, literally, tries to tear itself to bits. We did more work on it and came up with a specific protection, _Sinoviac_, which protects fluid in the joints.

People asked us, when we announced the spell, how we managed to be so calm and analytical when thinking about it. But that was the point: We weren't thinking about the curse. We were thinking about the analysis. You can't think about the curse, ever, because it stays in the blood and you never completely shake it off. It lies dormant, and the thing that triggers recurrences is memory.

They're not as bad, the recurrences, but just because agony isn't excruciating doesn't mean it isn't agony.

I think I'll stop now. I may have already written about it too much.

*See Michael Corner and he Field of Daisies


End file.
